War Trauma And Its Wake

War Trauma and Its Wake a vital book for anyone interested in understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are crucial for any clinician committed to healing war trauma.

Decades after Charles Figley’s landmark Trauma and Its Wake was published, our understanding of trauma has grown and deepened, but we still face considerable challenges when treating trauma survivors. This is especially the case for professionals who work with veterans and active-duty military personnel. War Trauma and Its Wake, then, is a vital book. The editors—one a Vietnam veteran who wrote the overview chapter on treatment for Trauma and Its Wake, the other an Army Reserve psychologist with four deployments—have produced a book that addresses both the specific needs of particular warrior communities as well as wider issues such as battlemind, guilt, suicide, and much, much more. The editors’ and contributors’ deep understanding of the issues that warriors face makes War Trauma and Its Wake a crucial book for understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are essential for anyone committed to healing war trauma.

Published in the year 1985, Trauma and its Wake is a valuable contribution to the field of Counseling and School Psychology.

First published in 1987. Trauma and Its Wake, Volume II: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Theory, Research, and Treatment is the eighth book in the Psychosocial Stress Book Series. The purpose of the Series is to develop and publish books that in some way make a significant contribution to the understanding and management of the psychosocial stress reaction paradigm. The books are designed to advance the work of clinicians, researchers, and other professionals involved in the varied aspects of human services. The primary readership of this Series includes those practitioners, scholars, and their students who are committed to this purpose. The origin of this current book can be traced to Volume #4 in the Series, Trauma and Its Wake: The Study and Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, edited by Charles R. Figley. This was the first attempt to generalize research and clinical findings among a wide variety of traumatic or catastrophic events towards a generalized view of traumatic and post-traumatic stress reactions. Chapters focused on the immediate and long-term psychosocial consequences of exposure to one of many types of catastrophic events: war, rape, natural disasters, incest. Other chapters focused on effective methods of treating or preventing stress reactions or disorders. It is the first in a series of books that will review the latest innovations in theory, research, and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused by a wide variety of stressful life events. The book you are reading is the second of this series of annually published volumes on PTSD within the Book Series.

Healing War Trauma details a broad range of exciting approaches for healing from the trauma of war. The techniques described in each chapter are designed to complement and supplement cognitive-behavioral treatment protocols—and, ultimately, to help clinicians transcend the limits of those protocols. For those veterans who do not respond productively to—or who have simply little interest in—office-based, regimented, and symptom-focused treatments, the innovative approaches laid out in Healing War Trauma will inspire and inform both clinicians and veterans as they chart new paths to healing.

War trauma has long been associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a term coined in 1980 to explain the post-war impact of Vietnam veterans. The Gulf and Balkan wars added new dimensions to the traditional PTSD definition, due largely to the changing dynamics of these wars.

“An essential book” on PTSD, an all-too-common condition in both military veterans and civilians (The New York Times Book Review). Post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts as many as 30 percent of those who have experienced twenty-first-century combat—but it is not confined to soldiers. Countless ordinary Americans also suffer from PTSD, following incidences of abuse, crime, natural disasters, accidents, or other trauma—yet in many cases their symptoms are still shrouded in mystery, secrecy, and shame. This “compulsively readable” study takes an in-depth look at the subject (Los Angeles Times). Written by a war correspondent and former Marine with firsthand experience of this disorder, and drawing on interviews with individuals living with PTSD, it forays into the scientific, literary, and cultural history of the illness. Using a rich blend of reporting and memoir, The Evil Hours is a moving work that will speak not only to those with the condition and to their loved ones, but also to all of us struggling to make sense of an anxious and uncertain time.